Working on a new episode. Nothing all that flattering earth shattering, but something to make sure I don’t podfade or anything. Been playing around with a new microphone and settings.
I hope at least a couple of people will be excited to hear from me soon. Fishing this afternoon 1/2 the episode recorded (editing down still left to do), maybe record the 2nd half tomorrow?
The quilt is (finally) hanging up on the wall. What a difference this makes! My first quilt is finally being ‘displayed’ instead of just draped over the keyboard.
I feel this is another big first step to feeling like a ‘real quilter’.
If you’ll endulge a few moments of my blog lamenting for a while. If you like the math, science stuff, skip this post and go to the next one (I hope!).
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I still have ‘blog spring fever’ where I don’t update the blog a whole lot, I don’t comment a whole lot on other blogs, I haven’t done a podcast in a while.
I look at my google reader and yes, right now it does feel like a chore to go through all the posts. Yes you guys deserve more of my enthusiasm and joy and wonder and amazement, but right now, I’m still not feeling the ‘blog love.’ I am definitely in ‘blog like’, but not ‘blog love’ as much as I was.
Don’t get me wrong, you guys are fantastic!
I so want to start up again. I want to go back to commenting on every single comment I get on the blog, I want to start spending time researching topics that are interesting and intriguing and different. I want to do so much, but I am holding myself back for a short while and I don’t understand exactly why.
So I’m claiming it blog spring fever season. Let’s hope I get some medicine soon!
Thanks for any replies over in big tent Quiltcast Supergroup (link is on the left on my blog) to any questions I have. I know you’re listening and I am learning a lot by the questions I am asking there.
This blog has been a ghost town for a few weeks now, and I don’t blame you. It’s all my lack of drive and helpfulness and actual posting, and my lack of podcasts(!) and whatever else I bring to the table.
Schedule looks a little rough for a while for true blue research, but I may get a chance to get next monday off work and if so, I’ll try to devote that time to you guys in a better way than I have been.
I noticed that in my podcasts, when I do the preliminary section of the podcast, I ramble, and I think I am coherent because in my mind I’ve linked one idea I’ve talked about to another, but when I actually listen back (days later) I wonder if it is clear to everyone else – because of course everything is crystal clear to me when I am editing it as I go! I think this is the area I have to ‘stay on topic more’. But it’s my right brain taking over that section and being all conversational.
I think this is another one of those right brained-non-coherent posts where I am trying to say that my left brain doesn’t like that my right brain rambles, and then there is this weird brain battle in my head and …. Okay now I am being weird about this.
Thanks for listening to my thoughts today.
No I didn’t fall off the earth.
I just have been busy with home life and stuff.
This week I’ll get in touch with the winner of the moda charm pack and post it on my blog.
This past weekend has been anything but restful and my home projects have taken over my mind. Sad, but no podcast this weekend. Perhaps I can do it in the middle of the week? Next weekend I have plans too, so maybe not for a little while.
I’ve just not been sitting down at the computer hardly at all, and overtime at work again, and … okay you don’t want to hear that.
Over at the Big Tent group which is going really well, I asked a question about family and crafting.
Here is what I asked:
I was just wondering a few things about family (maybe this should be a poll?) How many of you learned to craft or quilt from your family? How many of you learned to craft or quilt and then taught someone else in your family? How many of you learned to craft or quilt and then found out later that other family also learned (separately) to craft or quilt? Do you work on family craft days together?
Who in your family crafts (if anyone)? Or do you just have friends that are good enough to consider family that craft with you?
There have already been lots of good replies. Here is mine.
Wow thanks for all your thoughtful answers already. My answers: I am sure my grandma used to crochet, I used to see doll tops with crocheted dress bottoms over bottles all the time, but never taught me. I did get some glass beads from her also when she was going to be moving, and so she was crafty. One aunt made these little dough pins but never taught me either (my mom tried to duplicate it with us, but not a ton of luck there). On the other side my aunts were really into cross stitch and gave me a preprinted cat design which they taught me and I cross stitched in one color, and then when it was done, my aunt made it into a pillow that is still at my dad’s house on display. I received a lot of crafty gifts for christmas, but never did a ton of crafting – sometimes at my grandma’s house if someone brought a craft to work on (aka the wreath), but nothing all that often. Taught myself to sew by reading vintage books in the car on long trips and hand sewn a few pillows for my sister with wonderful fabric while watching movies (used a running stitch and whip stitch). Found out that sparkly fabric does not work well for pillows if you don’t want a shiny face in the morning.
Surprisingly there was a class on machine quilting in my middle school during activity period (you could take something for a quarter – i took that, and cross stitch, and candy making, and band … it was fun!) and I made a log cabin block which is also still at my dad’s house. There were so many rules, but it got me used to a sewing machine. I think one activity period I made a cupcake felted pillow out of a kit too, but that’s really vague.
Long story short last year I taught myself to quilt, and then in the summer found out that two aunts have taken up quilting independantly of my knowledge and so it’s nice to have something in common with them. Live a decent amount of hours away from both of them and so having family craft days don’t seem that likely. Don’t go back home all that often any more. A few nieces seem to like crafting a little bit, but again, no time to spend with them doing that for various reasons.
Maybe someday I’ll get my lost crafts at my dad’s house. Or at least get pictures of them anyway.
Here is an example of the type of fabric I used to make a pillow (not a pillow case, but a pillow) for my sister. One day she woke up with sparkly over her face and we didn’t realize why for a couple of days until we saw the sparkles on the pillow. Doh.
I finally sat down and started playing with Chaos Pro fractal generating program.
This thing has amazingly complicated capabilities, and it’s been interesting to try them out.
I truely need a complete fractal refresher to completely appreciate the mathematics behind these designs.
This trumpet-like design was the first one I played with.
It takes a while to figure out how to get the colors to stop, many times with this pattern I saw a wonderful design and color palette and it would keep generating to the next one.
Persistance and tenacity prevailed and I used some of my ‘good experimentation techniques’ to try to figure out what each setting did.
Sometimes I would see a lot of change, sometimes I wouldn’t see any. So it goes with experiments.
I love the orange pop right next to the blue in this trumpet design.
I really like how it transparently layers into itself, which may be hard to replicate with multiple pieces of fabric.
This one started as a blue / blue design. I had it somewhat blue and red.
It was on this image I started figuring out some more of the color choices I had available. There is so many different types of options for even this design.
Couldn’t you see this as a fabric pattern? Maybe I’ll have to give Spoonflower a try.
So far this bottom one is my absolute favorite. It’s a seashell done as a plasma, to the side, but you can see the pinkish/purplish tint to the whole thing.
I put this one as my computer background, but the original image I created was on the smaller pixel resolution size and to get it to look good, I have to tile it. Which I don’t like.
I could recreate this design (or something similar) with a larger pixel size. We’ll see.
I seem to like the plasma (gives it a transparent like effect) when its applied to these shapes. I wonder how they would quilt though.
NO episode this week. Come see us on the Big Tent. It’s been a lot of fun and a lot of activity. And sign up for my Scientific Quilter Design group on flickr.
Oh yeah, one of my blogs that focuses on block & quilting design Wayne Kollinger’s Quilt Blog talked about using fibonacci to create quilt block sizes that he found from Virtual Quilter. Sounds like I have another new blog to follow!
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